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The real story of the Spanish Armada.

In the winter of 1587 the Spanish Armada, the largest force of warships ever assembled, set sail to crush the English navy. This breathtaking overview of one of the most fascinating campaigns in European history begins with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the event that precipitated the launching of the Armada. From the first whispers of the threat against England and the English crown, to the return of the battered remnants of the fleet to Spain eighteen months later, it is a story rich in incident and intrigue. In this controversial study, Neil Hanson claims that Francis Drake’s intention was not to sink the Armada ships but to disable and plunder them. He further claims that Queen Elizabeth was a monarch who left many of the survivors of the battle to die of disease or starvation and whose parsimony, prevarication and cynicism left her unable to make crucial decisions.

Drawing on previously undiscovered personal papers, Neil Hanson conveys in vivid detail how the highest and the lowest in the land fared in those turbulent months when the destiny of all Europe hung in the balance.

Buy, download and read The Confident Hope of a Miracle (eBook) by Neil Hanson today!

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Chapter One

God's Obvious Design

A little after ten o'clock on the morning of Wednesday, 18 February 1587, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, entered the great hall of Fotheringay, preceded by the Sheriff, bearing the white wand of his office, and escorted by the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury. Her retinue of six followed behind. She had already kept her audience waiting for three hours as she made her prayers, read her will aloud to her servants, gave them final instructions, and finished last letters to be smuggled with her 'principal notes and papers' to her cousin the Duc de Guise and to Henri of France. 'I must die like a criminal at seven in the morning,' she wrote, but even on the day of her execution none had dared to hurry the preparations of a queen, until at last soldiers were ordered to break down the door to her quarters if she delayed any longer. Over two hundred knights and gentlemen were present, hastily summoned to witness her end. Some had ridden all night; their boots were mud-splashed and the smell of damp wool from their rain-soaked cloaks hung in the air, for the logs blazing in the great stone hearth did little to lessen the chill of a bitter winter's day. A much larger crowd had gathered outside the castle, some holding placards depicting Mary as a mermaid — the symbol of a prostitute. They were watched over by a troop of cavalry, and musicians assembled in the courtyard played a dirge, 'an air commonly played at the execution of witches'

The crowd stirred, men jostling and craning their necks to see the most notorious woman in Europe, tall, beautiful and sexually voracious, but also a constant treacherous conspirator against their own queen and, if rumour were true, a murderess twice over. Many must have been disappointed; there was no hint of such scandals in the modest demeanour of the woman in front of them that cold morning. Mary's gait was slow and measured, and her eyes downcast 'like a devout woman going to her prayers'. A chain of scented beads with a golden cross hung around her neck, she had a rosary at her waist, and she carried an ivory crucifix in her hand. Age had dimmed her beauty but her eyes, in a face almost as pale as the white lace at her throat, remained clear and keen. The auburn hair showing beneath her kerchief was the only flash of colour in the room. She was clad from head to foot in black velvet, echoing the drapes on the dais in front of her. Hurriedly constructed after the arrival of the death warrant signed by Queen Elizabeth on Sunday evening, the platform was twenty feet by twelve and little more than three feet high, topped by a rail like a picket fence, low enough to allow the spectators an uninterrupted view. It was a modest stage for the last act of a drama that had been played out for almost thirty years.

The murmur of voices died away and a silence fell on the room as Mary mounted the steps of the platform and walked slowly towards the single high-backed, black-draped chair at the far end. In front of it was a kneeling cushion and then the scalloped shape of the executioner's block, both also draped in black serge. As she sank into the chair, Mary raised her eyes, dark as the velvet she wore, and surveyed her audience. The firelight reflected from the breastplates and helmets of the row of guards facing her, sheriff's men, each holding a halberd in his right hand. Her expression betrayed no emotion as her gaze moved from them to two powerfully built, masked and black-clad figures, one of them resting his hands on the haft of his double-headed axe, 'like those with which they cut wood'. Robert Beale, the Clerk to the Privy Council and brother-in-law to the principal Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham, unrolled the parchment bearing the Queen's seal and began to read from it. The warrant cited Mary's 'stubborn disobedience and incitement to insurrection against the life and person of Her Sacred Majesty'. The crime was high treason and the sentence was death.

Mary was nine years younger than Elizabeth — 'the Virgin Queen' or 'the English Jezebel', depending on the observer's religious persuasion. Daughter of James V of Scotland and Marie de Guise of France, she had become Queen of the Scots in 1542 at just one week old, following the death of her father, who collapsed and died after hearing that his invading army had been slaughtered by Henry VIII's troops at Solway Moss. At the age of six, she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, the future Francis II of the royal house of Valois, and became a ward of Catherine de' Medici at the French court. She duly married at the age of fifteen and within a year was Queen of France, but she soon showed her talent for intrigue by passing secret information to her uncles the de Guises, the enemies of the Valois kings.

The granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister, Mary felt herself, not Elizabeth, to be the rightful heir to his throne. Monarchs were not constrained by the same laws as their subjects in civil or ecclesiastical matters; many inconvenient marriages had been dissolved with the compliance of the Vatican, and many bastard offspring, including the Emperor Charles V's son, Don Juan of Austria, and daughter, Margaret, Duchess of Parma, had been declared legitimate. But Henry VIII had gone too far ever to be forgiven, even posthumously. He had not only divorced a woman of the imperial blood — Catherine of Aragon was Charles V's aunt — he had also wrenched his populace from the Church of Rome, and confiscated its assets. There was no possibility that Elizabeth would ever be seen in Paris, Madrid or Rome as anything but the bastard daughter of Henry's bigamous marriage to Anne Boleyn, and moreover one whose self-proclaimed virginity hid a score of scandals: 'Wife to many and to many daughter-in-law, oh foul queen, nay no queen, but lustful, beastly whore.' Even among Englishmen, the title the 'Virgin Queen' may well have been entirely ironic when first bestowed.

After Mary Tudor's death in 1558, Francis II declared himself and his wife to be 'rulers of France, Scotland, England and Ireland' and quartered the English coat of arms with his own, but following Mary's bloody reign of terror few Englishmen could stomach the idea of another Catholic monarch, and Elizabeth began to consolidate her hold on power. The immediate threat to her throne was removed when Francis died suddenly on 6 December 1560, having reigned for only sixteen months, leaving Mary, Queen of Scots, a widow at just eighteen. She accepted the Scottish crown, but scandal surrounded her from the first. She took a string of lovers, was implicated in the murder of Rizzio and of her second husband Lord Darnley, and then compounded the outrage by marrying her husband's murderer, the Earl of Bothwell. Imprisoned and forced to abdicate, she escaped from her captivity and rallied forces loyal to her, but they were defeated at the battle of Langside in 1568 and she then fled to England, seeking the protection of Elizabeth. She spent the remainder of her life under confinement, but it was a gilded cage — she was allowed a retinue of forty and was permitted to hunt and visit spas to take the waters — and she was the constant focus and sometimes the wellspring of intrigues and plots.